the Church, the banquet ever spread: our Lord was now inviting the Jews, and would soon by his apostles call them to the ready banquet: and on their refusal he would bring in the idolatrous nations of the earth, till then the outcasts of grace: but he warns us, children of the Gentiles, that when invited we must not fail as we enter to purify ourselves and put on the wedding garments, which are ever ready, lest we be cast out and our last state become worse than our first: even as in our day we see Christians falling in belief and life lower than the pagans of old. Our Saviour did not merely preach, he taught by his actions: he ever sought the poor, the outcast, the despised sinner, the condemned publican. The Scribes and Pharisees murmured, but he taught them of God's mercy, of his willingness

to receive the repenting sinner, by the parable of the prodigal son, who leaving a fond and affectionate father, went abroad, plunged into every dissipation till his wealth was exhausted, and as famine afflicted the land, the friends of his pleasures forsook him, and he became a wretched swineherd. Thus destitute, forsaken and despised, he entered into himself, and remembering his father's house, where the lowest menial actually rolled in luxury compared to his abject state, he

exclaimed: "I will arise and go to my father, and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee: I am not now worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants." Nor was it a passing thought, an idle resolution: he set out for that house that he had abandoned, and his father seeing him afar, recognized him for all his misery, and ran out to meet him. This was not all, the good father embraced his repentant son with many tears, he dressed him in his best robes, he spread a banquet and filled his house with joy.*

When the period of the feast of tabernacles approached, that is towards October, our Lord again prepared to visit the Holy City, passing through the midst of Samaria and Galilee, and the country beyond the Jordan. On the way he gave many instructions, which St. Luke has recorded, on divorce, alms, scandal, and other topics. As the festival day drew nearer his brethren urged him to go up to the city. He intended to go, he had even told the Pharisees,

Our Lord declining to go to the Feast of Tabernacles.

who sought his life, that they should not see him again in Jerusalem till the close of that solemnity :+ but as he did not intend to be present at the beginning of it, and thus go up with them, he said: "Go you up to this festival day; but I go not up to this festival day, because my time is not accomplished," and he remained in Galilee: but some days after proceeded in secret to the Holy City. The Jews from all parts had entered bearing the branches, and the bowers had been made to commemorate the tents of the children of Israel in the desert: all were engaged in the solemnities, and our Redeemer, for whom all were inquiring, whose doctrine all were discussing, was not perceived till he rose

* St. Luke

XV,

11-32.

† St. Luke xiii, 35.

in the temple to teach. Then the people again began to discuss whether he was the Messiah, and they wondered that the rulers who had sought to kill him, now allowed him to preach his doctrine openly, and avow that his doctrine was of God: "My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. He that sent me is true: whom you know not: but whom I know, because I am from him, and he hath sent me. Yet a little while I am with you: and then I go to him that sent me." On the last and great day of the festivity, the Hosanna Rabba, while all waving the branches of palm, osier and myrtle, chanted the words of the 117th Psalm: "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord," Jesus stood and cried: "If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. He that believeth in me, as the scripture saith, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." Many now convinced by his doctrine cried out: "This is indeed the Messiah," and the chief priests resolved to apprehend him: but when the officers approached, they durst not lay hands on him, and returned to those that sent them, saying: "Never did there man so speak as this man." "Are you also seduced," said the Pharisees contemptuously; and though Nicodemus urged them to examine his claim before condemning him, they persisted in their design to effect his death.*

Towards evening our Lord retired to Mount Olivet, and having spent the night there, returned to the temple, where he sat down and taught the people. The Scribes and Pharisees had consulted for some plan to entrap him, and as a woman had just been taken in adultery, they brought her before our Lord to ask what should be done with her, as by the law she should be punished by death. This law had long been obsolete, but they hoped now to make our Divine Redeemer appear either as a lax follower of the law if he advised a less punishment, or a man of blood if he sought to revive the ancient law. "Master," said they, "this woman was even now taken in adultery, and Moses in the law commanded

us to stone such an one." But Jesus stooping down wrote with his finger in the sand; regardless of what he wrote, they repeated the question, and rising full of majesty, he said: "He that is without sin among you, let him first throw the stone at her," and again stooping down he wrote as before. Baffled by this answer the eldest silently withdrew, and one by one all went out leaving Jesus and the woman alone amid the crowds whom he had been instructing. When Jesus, lifting himself up, said to her: "Woman, where are they that accused thee? Hath no man condemned thee?" She answered: "No man, O Lord;" then as she sank before him, Jesus pronounced the consoling words: "Neither will I condemn thee; go, and now sin no more."

THE HOLY FAMILY.—MURILLO.

THE accomplished painter of the original picture of the Holy Family, was born at Seville, on the 1st of January, 1613, of poor parents; and in the face of many difficulties, our young genius had to fight his way up to that high eminence which he ultimately reached in the fine arts. His biographer remarks that a visit to the studio of a relative first gave him the determination to be a painter. Juan de Castillo was the honored name of that relative, who taught our young artist the rudiments of the sublime science. Juan removed to Cadiz, and Murillo was obliged to earn a subsistence, while pursuing his studies, by painting banners and small pictures for exportation to South America. He labored on for many years, overcoming all the difficulties which met him on his road to eminence,-like a man should do who is determined to conquer. He had seen some of the productions of Vandyke, and was struck with the beauty of their coloring and forthwith he resolved to study in the same school, and at once to repair to Rome, the nurse of the arts and sciences. But, alas! he was poor; his friends endeavored to persuade him from his purpose, and pronounced his scheme wild and Utopian. Murillo, nothing daunted, bought a quantity of canvass, divided it into small squares, and labored early and late until he had produced a quantity of beautiful sacred pictures, and then set off to Rome, selling his pictures for bread as he proceeded. On his arival at Rome, he met with kind friends, and labored on until he excelled the works of his masters. The princes and prelates of the Church, in both Spain and Rome, as also several of the monastic orders, engaged his pencil in the production of sacred pictures for their churches; hence have we many of those masterpieces of genius, which are invaluable and unrivalled, to-day. Amongst his productions was the History of St. Francis, which he painted for the convent of Franciscans at Seville, which excited the admiration of everybody. His pictures of St. Clara and St. James established his fame, and orders flowed in upon him from all quarters. Another celebrated picture was his Marriage of St. Catherine, over the grand altar of the Capuchin church at Cadiz; while painting this he fell, and so much injured himself, that he never thoroughly recovered the effects until death relieved him, in April, 1682. His other paintings are very numerous; and if they do not elevate him to the dignity of a Raphael, or the grandeur of a Caracci, or the grace of Correggio, his great talents place him in the first rank amongst the painters of every school.

MARY LEE:

Or the YANKEE in IRELAND.*

BY PETER PINKIE.

Edited by PAUL PEPPERGRASS, Esquire.

CHAPTER XVIII.

DURING Mr. Weeks' long and secret conference with the negro (for Mrs. Motherly was carefully excluded from the room), Hardwrinkle still remained closeted with the officer of constabulary at Crohan House, devising plans for the immediate committal of Randall Barry to Lifford jail. A difficulty, however, presented itself, which Mr. Hardwrinkle had entirely overlooked in his zeal for the safety of the state-namely, the presence of Captain Petersham of Castle Gregory, who as senior magistrate of the barony, was very much in the habit of taking such cases into his own hands, and disposing of them according to his own peculiar views of the law thereunto made and provided. Mr. Hardwrinkle, it appears, in order to avoid unnecessary delay, was for having the prisoner brought before himself and committed forthwith-but the officer demurred on the ground that the Captain had already, in anticipation of Barry's arrest, given strict orders to have the prisoner brought before him, and no other. Hardwrinkle denied Captain Petersham's right to issue such orders, inasmuch as the crime charged against Barry was a capital offence, requiring prompt and summary action by the nearest of her majesty's justices of the peace, without distinction of rank. Furthermore, he contended that Captain Petersham, from his well known disaffection to the government, and his notorious opposition to its measures for the "amelioration" of Ireland, was neither a fit or proper person to try the case at all. Still more, he assured the officer that the Captain's anxiety to take Barry into his own hands was but the consequence of a secret determination on his part to let the young rebel escape, if he could possibly do so, on some pretence or other, and therefore to trust such a man with the case was virtually to defeat the law, and frustrate the designs of the government.

These remonstrances, however, seemed to produce but little effect on the police officer, who still persisted in his determination of bringing the prisoner before the senior magistrate as in duty bound-adding by way of makeweight, that he valued his life too highly to risk it by an act of premeditate disobedience to the orders of such a madman and fire-eater as Captain Tom Petersham of Castle Gregory.

At length, after various plans and schemes had been proposed and rejected, it was finally agreed that nothing could be done for the present, but that early on the following morning Mr. Hardwrinkle should despatch his servants post-haste to certain magistrates of the neighborhood, on whose loyalty he could depend, requesting their presence next day on the Petit Sessions bench, in order to neutralize any

* Copy-right secured according to Law.